I had a fairly normal childhood, but was not raised around many boys. I was the only boy in my family, and was picked on by my male cousins - they never treated me as an equal.
As time went on, I became the target of every bully at school. I did horribly with sports, and no one wanted me on their team, and I was ridiculed for my inabilities. At home, I never felt my dad loved me or approved of me. I never was interested in the things he was - sports, hunting, fishing.
Looking back, I really had no clue what was going on. I would hang around with the girls - that was safer, and the boys became a mystery, something I felt I was not. I started admiring other boys, would find myself fascinated by trashy romance novel covers - not the skimpily dressed female, but the shirtless guy opposite her.
While still a teenager, I started getting these books and reading the "sex parts", always focusing more on the guy, but still not getting it. I graduated, went to a Christian college. I dated a couple of girls, mainly because it was the thing to do, but it didn't go anywhere. I think I eventually would have realized what was going on - I had just never known much about homosexuality, or been exposed to it, but something happened that removed the doubts. For one of our classes, we had to do a paper on some big issue. I wanted to do witchcraft, but the teacher was afraid someone could get involved in it as a result of studying it. So I picked homosexuality. As I studied it, read about it, it finally hit me. Something I had suspected, but really hadn't given that much thought to - I was gay. I was like these people I was reading about as I wrote this report.
Shortly after that, I bought my first gay pornography, starting a life-long struggle with that, and also had my first sexual experience, all while still in a Christian college. Not on campus. I did however, often store my magazines in my room, and came pretty close to discovery in that area once.
It is a vicious cycle. I would sit in the church pew, silently struggling, come to a point that I couldn't handle it anymore, ask God's forgiveness, and stay on my feet a few weeks, sometimes months, and down I would go again, often feeling suicidal. I eventually told pastors and friends, and some of them were helpful, but none of them knew how to handle it. I came to the realization that I couldn't depend on people to kick this, it had to be God.
There are a lot of chapters in my story, some I'd rather not tell, but for years I lived that cycle, and it took its toll on me. I had health scares, it affected me emotionally, but never did I consider giving up, or trying to be a gay Christian. Those were just not options.
Here I am so many years later. The desires are still there, sometimes more than others, but I am still determined to make it, and that means living a single & celibate life, but we all have our cross to bear, and this is mine.
1 comment:
I get that.
My childhood was similar. Did not get masculine validation or affirmation from my father. Was never good at sports. To make matters worse, from a very early age I had to battle overweight, and did not feel I had a masculine body - at least what I felt a masculine body to be. Let's say that I wasn't (and still ain't) "well endowned". It's a stupid thing, but the fact is that in our Western culture, we equate penis size with masculinity. Please forgive me for being so graphic, but I'm anonymous here, and I feel that this was a very important issue for me.
The hard fact of same sex attractions did not dawn to me till my adolescence, though present from many years before.
I do not know if there is a physical cause (genetic or otherwise). Most probably not. Frankly, it makes no difference. The gay rights movement is anxiously awaiting for some scientific proof of a genetic cause, as (so they think) it would enable them to say, "we were born this way, there is nothing we can do about it, just as a black person was born black and cannot change."
I disagree. When a child is born with a cleft palate, for instance, no one says, "Oh, he was born that way, we need to accept it, it's beautiful" - far from it. We get a surgeon to fix it.
It was not till many years later that I realized that the two main roots of my same sex attractions were:
1 - I was missing my father - with whom I never had a close, loving relationship; I sought him in other guys.
2 - Due to sports inabilities and the way my body was, I felt less of a man, and started to envy and seek masculinity in others, eroticising it, much as old time cannibals would eat their enemies believing that in so doing, they would get some of the enemies' strengths.
I can say, too, that God saved me and God rescued me. I still feel SSAs, but much less than before. Not my merit, in no way, but Jesus'.
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